13th August 2008, 02:45 PM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by BAJR Host
The question which does begin to raise its head, is the nature of the beast... can a charity act as a commercial group and balance the load. For example there is often resentment from local traders about Oxfam shops using charitable status to gain an unfair advantage via tax breaks - when selling clothes, chocolate and other 'new' items.
Would it be wrong to ask the proportion of charity work to commercial ? (I just know that Uo1 will have some figures )
Having spoken to a local antiques/second hand shop owner there is a far bigger problem from their point of view when it comes to charity shops - charity shops get all their stuff for free! Now some Oxfams are also 'specialist book shops' it does make you wonder whether there would be any point in anyone else trying in the face of such unfair competition (although I obviously don't want to knock a charity, that is a bit evil!).
Is there a direct parallel in archaeology - not exactly, and we have been over a lot of this before (see reference to previous post), but if a charitable organisation is getting computer software, for example, or anything else, at a discounted rate (as I believe they can) is this fair to everyone else? Is there enough there to balance it? Do you get comparable situations in other businesses - charity builders? Charity architects? Charity environmental consultants?
It seems to me to be a throw-back to an older way of doing things where archaeology was carried out when people could scrape together enough money to grab things before the bulldozers moved in. Also, as a charity I always assume that there is considerably less emphasis to invest in the organisation (new equipment, training) because any surplus cash is supposed to aid its charitable aims. Or am I completely wrong?